Evaluation

I believe the project went well despite me changing the direction i wanted to take it many times and having to adapt my work to fit the new idea. Due to this, my final project probably wasn't quite up to the standard i would have expected from myself in the area i enjoy most. The extra week to get my project done enabled me to edit and add to the PowerPoint presentation of my character sketches to a better level. I have completed the presentation but had i had more time i would have liked to have digitally redrawn the sketches.

I am vaguely pleased with my project as i feel i could have done better but because of the workload i gave myself due to changing my idea, the deadline became increasingly less reachable throughout the project. Perhaps next time when i choose to do something similar i will motivate myself to complete an idea and tweak it rather than change it completely, loosing time and work because of this builds up and only means i am then behind in the work that is to be submitted. Or maybe think through the possible alternative ideas for a project before committing to one that i may find too inaccessible.

My ideas changed quite drastically from start to finish as i jumped from fiction to illustration, witchcraft to sci-fi. I have however learned a few more things in the process in programs and sites such as PowerPoint, when putting together my animatic, and Blogger, which, in my opinion is easier to keep up to date as i can have easy access to it at home and allows me to add all relevant information concerning my project and have it all in one place.

When i was finally focused on the project aim i researched an animatic artist on YouTube called Andrew Cherry. My main inspiration for creating a rough animatic myself came from watching his pre-visualisation video: My Deer Friend, which then resulted in me creating characters and putting together a story behind them. I went on from drawing sketches of characters to digitally redrawing them just to give them a a bit of definition against the black and white animatic i had started.

I have enjoyed most aspects of this project, besides the stress of giving myself too much work to get done, and i would definitely consider doing something like this in the future as i would consider illustration to be a preferred pathway. I will just have to make sure i narrow down the possible creative outcomes before committing to one straight away.

Characters

Some coloured pics of my characters:

Avril

Clair

Melina

Hanna

I'll be submitting more when i get around to it. I will also show the process i go through to develop my sketches into these rough digital adaptations.

Story Notes

Notes about the story:

• From what i've written, there are 14 (Samoan, Cameron, Narissa, Melina, Luciana, Phianna, Chantelle, Laraya, Kayla, Becci, Avril, Jarek, Jesse. Clair and Hanna) characters split into 4 groups.
• The setting of the story is inside a simulation (as in virtual environment). Phianna refers to 'the next Phase' meaning the next level in the game. This specific level in the game represents the 15th century with the groups being split in a church next to the ruin of Radcliffe Manor, the graveyard outside the church, a forest and an open field.
• The groups were split up and their goal is to reach the checkpoint to exit the simulation.

More to be added

PowerPoint

I have begun my PowerPoint presentation for the project and will hopefully get it done, or most of it, in time. Below is an example of the process of what i am doing.

Storyboard Animatics

In animation and special effects work, the storyboarding stage may be followed by simplified mock-ups called "animatics" to give a better idea of how the scene will look and feel with motion and timing. At its simplest, an animatic is a series of still images edited together and displayed in sequence with a rough dialogue and/or rough sound track added to the sequence of still images (usually taken from a storyboard) to test whether the sound and images are working effectively together.

This is the method i will be using to set out my project or at least something similar.

EDIT: Instead of pictures with dialogue i will interpret digital typography into the frames. The program i will be using is Microsoft PowerPoint.

Update

>I have written the script and collected more imagery, that is now ready for me to reference when drawing.

>Despite having everything planned out and believing i would get everything done by the deadline, i think i may have set myself too many tasks to get done and have therefore dropped behind in the work i needed to complete the project. However, i have found a solution to this by adjusting my project to fit the Digital Story aspect more than i would have if i'd have done the comic. I am now using the script i had previously written and drawing up frames for a short Storyboard Animatic. The Animatic will be of sketches drawn in biro pen that will be strategically placed in PowerPoint to move using the transitions and effects in the program.

>Of the 2 page script, i have successfully completed over a half of the images required to make the story come to life. The next step will be to finish all images and begin making the animatic.

More reference pics